Mide New England Patriots Deflategate Case Study

Last season's Deflategate, when Patriots quarterback Tom Brady played nearly a whole game with underinflated footballs, caused waves of controversy for the NFL. The engineers at Midé—a small engineering company outside of Boston—took great interest in Deflategate not only because many of them are diehard Patriots fans, but also because it presents a real engineering problem. Mide engineers used Thermotron environmental test chambers to determine if the underinflated footballs used could have been due to pressure changes from the cold temperatures the game was played in, and found interesting results.